NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel has gone missing in Syria, according to Turkish news reports. The reports also say that Aziz Akyava, a Turkish journalist working with Engel, is unaccounted for. NBC News has been successfully keeping Engel's status subject to a news blackout—one to which Gawker agreed until now—for at least the past 24 hours.

Turkish newspaper Hurriyet is reporting that Engel and Akyava&#351; were last known to be in Syria and haven't been in contact with NBC News since Thursday morning. The news has been reported widely in the Turkish press over the past 24 hours, including by Turkish news channel NTV, which presents itself as an international partner of MSNBC. It's also been widely distributed on Twitter.

But NBC News has been asking every reporter who inquires about the report to participate in a news blackout. It has also taken to Twitter and asked people who repeated the Turkish reports there to take them down. You can see here a screengrab of the Twitter account @NBCComm asking a Twitter user who had mentioned the reports to urgently call a cell phone number (that account has since been taken down).

You can be sure he was not abducted by the Assad government, because if he was, the Pentagon would have shouted it from the hilltops. No, he was probably taken by the FSA extemists, killed for not being a Muslim, and the Pentagon is covering it up. Also, know that "NBC" did not ask for a blackout, only the Pentagon has that power, which they exercise over all US mainstream media in real time.

Quoting: RDprofessor

Steady on there, he's only missing, not killed? And whoever has him knows exactly who he his, because they lured him there.

Weren't they asking for a ransom for that Ukranian reporter last week? No outcome there either...